Production The Centre has produced a number of films entitled
Teaching of Nutrition
Vigyan Ki Padai
Educational Toys
Soviet Puppet Show
Innovations in Education
II. Educational Technology Cells in the States With the setting up of ET Cells in Haryana, Sikkim and West Bengal, the total number of such cells in the country is now 19 Cells in the remaining States are likely to be set up shortly. These Cells are expected to tester and promote the development of the programme at the State level. The entire expenditure on the setting up and maintenance of the State Educational Technology Cells is being met by the Government of India. Some of the activities undertaken by the State Educational Technology Cells are noted below :
(i) Andhra Pradesh : Training programmes for user teachers and script writers for radio broadcast programmes and educational television programmes were conducted in collaboration with All India Radio and Doordarshan, Hyderabad.
Two evaluation studies on SITE programmes and use of radio, school broadcast programmes by secondary and primary schools were completed. A State level seminar on educational technology
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was organised. Booklets on utilisation of TV and Radio Broad-casts programmes for teachers were published.
(ii) Gujarat : Auto-instructional materials for the subject English for students of Standard VI and VII are being prepared. Intensive inservice education programmes were taken up and 10,000 elementary teachers were trained in the teaching of English. A radio lesson for these teachers is also broadcast 30-prototypes of teaching kits and some booklets on specific topics have been prepared for non- formal education programmes. A few films were screened in villages where non-formal education centres are working for arousing awareness about non-formal education and adult education. A tape-recorded library is being organised for the collection of nursery rhymes. Workshops for script writers of radio and television educational programmes were held.
(iii) Karnataka : Educational Technology Cell co-ordinated with the All India Radio, Bangalore in the preparation of material for school broadcasts for both Primary and High Schools. The first batch of 50 primary school teachers out of 300 have been trained so far 19 persons having knowledge of writing literature for children have been trained for writing scripts for school broadcasts.
(iv) Manipur : The Educational Technology Cell organised a two- day course on Educational Technology for Assistant Inspectors of Schools for making them conversant with the role to be played by Educational Technology towards achieving universalisation of elementary education and the need to involve the community in educational programmes.
Educational broadcasts in a miniature form has been started as part of the general children's programme. The programme is on Social Studies for children of the age-group 6-13 and is broadcast every Sunday.
(v) Orissa : Educational Television programmes are continued to be telecast under the Community Viewing Scheme. Schools in 650 villages covered within 50 Km. radius of the transmission are benefited by these programmes. The State is also taking steps for supply of radio sets to schools, making radio listening compulsory, preparing a panel of teachers for script writing, maintaining log books, supplying teachers notes, and orienting script writers of radio programmes. Teachers Notes are being published in the Mother tongue also. A State level seminar on educational technology was organised to bring out awareness
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of the concept of educational technology and enlisting support of all concerned for implementing the programmes.
Since 25 per cent of the total population of the State are tribals, the teaching of regional language 'Oriya' poses a great problem for teachers. The Educational Technology Cell proposes to prepare some graphic materials, like flash cards and charts, for the use of teachers working in the tribal areas to make the language teaching for tribal children meaningful and interesting.
(vi) Rajasthan-School broadcast programmes are being broadcast regularly for students of VI to Xi classes for teaching English, Hindi and General Science, for teachers and for nonformal education. Educational television programmes are being utilised by schools having TV sets. There are about 500 sets in six districts of Rajasthan. The Cell has published a directory of educational teaching aids.
(vii) Tamil Nadu-Educational Technology Cell launched upon a massive programme of providing Radio sets in all the schools in the State with the help of the local community. The drive has yielded good results as 31,383 schools are equipped with radio sets. The Cell is rendering all assistance to All India Radio in the actual preparation and production of school broadcast programmes. Teachers' hand books and programme charts were distributed to all the schools in the State. A study on the utilisation of school broadcasts was undertaken. A large scale teacher training programme using correspondence-cum-radio-cum-contact approach and its evaluation was undertaken in collaboration with SCERT and All India Radio, Madras. The training was imparted to 600 teachers in 3 batches. In order to provide trained script writers to Doordarshan Kendra for writing script for ETV, a course was organised at Technical Teachers' Training Institute, Adyar, Madras 64 teachers have been trained so far 200 user teachers for educational television programmes were also trained.
(viii) Uttar Pradesh-Arrangements for provision of radio/ transistors to schools and utilisation of radio broadcast programmes by 4,000 schools in the State are in progress. Several films produced by the Education Expansion Department, Allahabad are being telecast by Doordarshan, Lucknow for nonformal education of adults. In-service teacher training programme is also being organised and about 1,000 teachers have benefited.
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III. Working Group on Educational Teachnology The Ministry of Education and Social Welfare set up a Working Group on Educational Technology with a view to identifying areas of priorities, working out detailed schemes and indicating financial implications. The representatives of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Doordarshan, All India Radio, Department of Social Welfare, State Governments and some members of the Press were included in the Working Group. The Working Group has recommended the continuation of Central financial support for the Educational Technology Programme for all States and Union Territories at least for another five years. It also recommended the setting up of an Institute of Educational Technology in each State which could absorb the Educational Technology Cells wherever they existed. These Educational Technology Cells will function as a separate wing of the SIE or SCERT in the States. The report of the Working Group has been published and is ready for distribution to the States. The States would be asked to prepare a blue print for an Educational Technology Wing in the SIE or SCERT. They would be left free to formulate programmes according to their needs.
NATIONAL COUNCIL OF EDUCATIONAL
RESEARCH & TRAINING The National Council of Educational Research and Training continued to undertake research, development, extension/training activities for the qualitative improvement of school education in the country, in line with the change in educational policy. The highlights of the programmes and activities for the year are given below:
I. Curriculum Development Work (i) Preparation of textbooks under 10+2 Pattern of Education : As per recommendations of the Ishwarbhai Patel Committee's Report, work in scrutinising curricula and textbooks mainly with a view to reducing the load and burden was taken up.
The revision of 19 titles for classes I, II, III and X was undertaken, besides the development of new textbooks in various subjects.
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In the area of curriculum development the activities included preparation of model draft curriculum samples in socially useful productive work on food, shelter, clothing, health, hygiene and social and community services through workshops of key persons, printing of 10 story picture books for primary children, and a school-readiness kit for direct new entrants to primary schools and holding of 3 workshops for developing instructional and evaluation material, one in history, geography and civics for class VIII, the second in Hindi for classes XI, XII and the third for developing unit tests in Biology at +2 stage.
(ii) Vocationalization of Education at the +2 Stage NCERT conducted orientation programmes and guided district vocational services in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Haryana. It also conducted a study of educational opportunities in Andhra Pradesh and a critical study of the progress of vocational courses in Karnataka.
II Training Programmes 89 summer institutes were held-34 for science and mathematics and 55 in language and humanities. Besides, an orientation course in micro-teaching for the personnel of the SIE's, training programmes for authors and evaluators of textbooks and development of instructional materials in environmental studies, an orientation programme for District Education Officers, workshops in development of programme learning lessons, working out content outlines for rural primary schools and demonstration of the CET multi-media package for in- service primary teachers, were held during the year. Further, a number of training programmes in the field of education technology were conducted by the Centre for Educational Technology of the NCERT.
III. Extension Programmes In the context of the recommendations of the Working Group on Universalisation of Elementary Education that there should he no detention up to class VIII, but with periodic evaluation and assessment to maintain standards, a conference of evaluation officers of the State Evaluation Units was held in May, 1978. Besides, in evaluation, an all-India training course and a seminar were held at Simla in June, 1978. Further, a seminar on management of public examinations was held at Delhi in October, 1978.
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While the work on the annual seminar on Readiness Programme for Elementary and Secondary Teacher Educators, which is organised every year, was in progress, workshops for secondary teachers in four States, namely, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh, were organised under Intensive Teacher Education Programme (ITEP).
Textbooks Evaluation: Two NCERT textbooks in languages and social sciences were evaluated in a workshop held in August, 1978, while 3 language textbooks were taken up for try out in 12 schools in various States. Besides, 40 textbooks in minority languages of Madhya Pradesh for classes I to V were evaluated.
IV. Regional Colleges of Education The four Regional Colleges of Education continued to organise pre-service and in-service training programmes.
(i) Pre-Service Training : Besides continuing to offer one-year B.Ed. course, and a new specialised course introduced in 1977-78 at B.Ed. level in elementary education to prepare persons competent to supervise and train teachers in elementary education, M.Ed. courses were continued as below :
Ajmer - Science Education
Bhopal - Elementary Education
Bhubaneswar - Curricula Construction,
Educational Administrat-
ion and Educational
Measurement.
The Mysore College offers a two-year post-graduate course of M.Sc. M.Ed. in physics, chemistry and mathematics.
(ii) In Service Training : In regard to in-service training the Regional Colleges continued the programme of summer schools-cum- correspondence course with an enrolment of 1000 teachers, correspondence-cum-contact programme for secondary teachers with an enrolment of 10,000 teachers and the correspondence-cum-contact programme for elementary teacher-educators with an enrolment of 600 teacher-educators. A number of short in-service training programmes were also conducted.
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V. Survey and Research Activities (i) Survey : As indicated earlier, the Fourth All India Edu- cational Survey in the field of school education in all States and Union Territories was mounted during the year. The various schedule and necessary analysis at the block, district and state levels were prepared, printed and supplied in adequate numbers to the states for preparing the survey tables. Two training programmes were organized at the national level to orient the State level officers who were incharge of the survey, the NCERT also helped in the organisation of training programmes for the field-level officers in the States involved in the survey work.
(ii) Research : Approved by the Educational Research and Innovation Committee (ERIC), 44 research projects in school education have been in progress in the various departments of the NCERT and its Regional, Colleges. A sum of Rs. 5,41,340 has been sanctioned for these projects 36 research projects undertaken by individuals or institutions were approved with a total expenditure of Rs. 2,36,100.
VI. Special Programmes/Projects (i) Universalization of Elementary education : Universalization of elementary education through formal and non-formal approaches has been receiving prior attention in the Council in line with the declared policy of the Government, Programmes of non-formal education have been taken up in 5 centres in tribal, hilly, rural and scheduled caste areas and in the urban slums located in Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Bihar and Delhi, as alternative programmes to formal education. Further, learning packages for non-formal education for school drop- outs have been developed for the various target groups and sent for printing. These will be tried out in non-formal education centres in all the Hindi-speaking States, to be set up according to the State plans of universalisation.
(ii) Population Education : The Unit in Population Education has taken a base-line survey to prepare the ground for the development of a national project on population education to be funded by UNFPA. Work on the following items has been completed (i) co-operative development of learning units in population education; (ii) a national source book on Population Education; and (iii) a country case study on Co-ordination between Population and Educational Policies.
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(iii) National Integration Project : Two National Integration camps, one for teachers and the other for students, were organised.
(iv) National Talent Search : During 1978 the NCERT has held the National Talent Search Tests at three different stages, i.e. class X, class XI and class XII The number of candidates who appeared in these tests and the number of awards made are as follows ;
No. of No. of
Candida- Awards
tes
Class X 37,640 250
Class XI 8,760 100
Class XII 17,831 150
(v) National Science Exhibition: The VIII National Science Exhibition for children was held at Teen Murti Bhavan, New Delhi in November, 1978. Over 400 science exhibits mostly fabricated by school children of 26 States/Union Territories were on display.
VII. Collaboration with the States The 18 Field Units of NCERT in various States/Union Territories continued their work relating to dissemination of information, collection of useful feed back and maintaining liaison with the State Governments/Union Territory Administrations in implementing the Council's major projects and activities. Besides, the various departments of the Council pursued a number of activities in collaboration with the States. Mention may be made of developing suitable primers and teachers' guides for adult education programme in collaboration with Madhya Pradesh, a training programme covering 160 T.V. user primary schools of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, development of diagnostic tests in modern mathematics for primary teachers in a 15-day workshop organised by the CET and orienting key persons in geography at the secondary stage in collaboration with Kerala.
VIII International Contacts The Council continued to keep contact with educational agencies and organisations in other countries and to follow programmes
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with international agencies, besides providing training programmes to foreign nationals. Mention may be made of a, workshop in November- December, 1978, sponsored by Unesco and participated by Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Indonesia, on laboratory maintenance and procedures in secondary schools with special reference to biology, two-month training programmes for primary teachers of Afghanistan and the contribution of, a collection of toys alongwith a slide-cum-tape programme, a video tape, a short film and a brochure, for exhibition at the 20th General Conference of Unesco in Paris.
A number of NCERT officers were deputed abroad under Cultural Exchange Programmes and also in connection with various workshops, seminars and conferences held under international auspices in various areas of school education.
IX. Development of Audio-Visual and Ancillary Materials The following constitute the main features of the programme of developing audio-visual materials during the year :-
(i) Proto-type of low-cost teaching aids like charts, posters, flash-cards, games, etc. for rural primary tea- chers ;